I have dabbled here in the past. Been a couple years since I was here. I was cooking a lot on my komado style cooker Bubba Keg (very similar to Big Green Egg).

I recently got the bug to do pizza again. So, I tried this recipe. I let it rise about 22 hrs and used my Bubba Keg with a pizza stone (actually a kiln shelf). Unfortunately, I let the keg get down to about 425 and it didn't get the crispy texture I wanted even though I pre-cooked the crust 4 mins first. Next time 550F

In case anybody is thinking about doing it, one thing I found out from experience is that you really should parbake the crust in the pan on a preheated stone at 500F -- not just on a rack. A few weeks ago I made pizzas for me and a buddy who was visiting, and was in kind of a hurry so I wanted to parbake both crusts at the same time. There wasn't room on the stone for both pans, so I parbaked his on the stone and mine on a rack above it.

The difference in results was amazing -- his crust puffed up like I had been seeing. My crust, while OK, didn't have the little pillows puffed up between the docking. It was pretty flat. It must be all the heat stored in the stone giving some extra punch.

Having had a lot more experience with this, I now know I can make those skins one at a time on the stone and then after they've had the sauce and toppings added, bake them all in one go either on the rack or stone. Getting the puffing at the parbaking stage is critical -- when I do the lamination with a little olive oil sprayed between the layers as I mentioned in the earlier comment in this thread, then parbake on the hot stone, it works PERFECTLY. I just have to plan ahead to make sure everything has time to get parbaked on the stone -- avoiding bottlenecks in the process when making more than one pizza.

Over on our bbq forum, there are some really good cooks that have been here as well. Some of the more progressive ones are going with a steel plate instead of a stone. I'm going to give it a try in my charcoal fired grill.

In case anybody is thinking about doing it, one thing I found out from experience is that you really should parbake the crust in the pan on a preheated stone at 500F -- not just on a rack. A few weeks ago I made pizzas for me and a buddy who was visiting, and was in kind of a hurry so I wanted to parbake both crusts at the same time. There wasn't room on the stone for both pans, so I parbaked his on the stone and mine on a rack above it.

The difference in results was amazing -- his crust puffed up like I had been seeing. My crust, while OK, didn't have the little pillows puffed up between the docking. It was pretty flat. It must be all the heat stored in the stone giving some extra punch.

Having had a lot more experience with this, I now know I can make those skins one at a time on the stone and then after they've had the sauce and toppings added, bake them all in one go either on the rack or stone. Getting the puffing at the parbaking stage is critical -- when I do the lamination with a little olive oil sprayed between the layers as I mentioned in the earlier comment in this thread, then parbake on the hot stone, it works PERFECTLY. I just have to plan ahead to make sure everything has time to get parbaked on the stone -- avoiding bottlenecks in the process when making more than one pizza.

Klankster,That is an extremely important tip that I'm not sure many are really aware of....and as you said, you found out about it by accident, literally. Very helpful, good post.

Sometime you might try using a flour with a somewhat higher protein content, such as the General Mills Better for Bread flour (formerly called Harvest King flour at the retail level). I personally preferred that flour for the cracker style over all-purpose flour.

Chuck, the steel plate looks AWESOME. That's some serious equipment, and it looks like it works great -- that crust is perfect. Great idea!

As for flour, I'm currently using a blend of 5oz of bread flour + 11oz of King Arthur "Lancelot" hi-gluten flour in this recipe, and have been pretty happy with it, but will keep experimenting. I tend to want it as crispy and crunchy as possible.

Saturday night is traditionally my pizza night here, but instead of making a pizza for myself tonight, I made three batches of this dough this morning and we're having 6 friends over tomorrow afternoon for a pizza party -- should be a lot of fun, since I have this recipe and the procedures down pat.

Today I started more dough. I decided to venture from the orig recipe. First, I used a rapid dry yeast. I sub'd Firestone Double Barrel Ale for the water. I warmed the beer to 90f to make the yeast work. I also changed the salt from 1 teaspoon to 1 1/2 teaspoon. 4 hrs later I couldn't wait anymore. The dough had risen very well and the smell was fantastic. I prebaked the skin at 550f for 4 mins on my 1/4" steel. Then topped it and finished at 550f for 6 mins. The flavor was great but it was overcooked.

Tonight I did another pie for my wife that worked late today from the same batch of dough. I adjusted the times. 3 min prebake, 4 min finish with toppings. That was just about perfect. The beer definitely adds flavor that comes thru as a more yeasty taste and possibly a hint of maltyness. I am guessing the beer reacts more to the yeast than water since it foamed up when I mixed in the yeast to the warmed beer. The flavor was also bigger after 8 hrs. But still excellent at 4 hrs. I'll try one at 24 hrs tomorrow.

One other change I made was to move the steel down to the lowest rack just above the heating element.

Peter I used King Arthur Bread flour. Is GM Better for Bread a better choice for a cracker crust?

Bob,Yes, the crust was nearly white between the blisters. But it did crunch up well.

I'm reconsidering the move of the steel plate to the lowest rack. My bake for my wife lastnight only allowed for a 3 min prebaked skin and 4 min finish with the toppings at 550F and the crust was about at the limit without burning the underside. The toppings didn't get any browning and were minimally cooked. I can either reduce the prebake to 2 min and increase the finish bake with toppings, or raise the steel to the center or top of the oven to get a better cook of the toppings.

Peter I used King Arthur Bread flour. Is GM Better for Bread a better choice for a cracker crust?

Chuck,

If you research this subject, you will find that any one of the three basic flours--all-purpose, bread and high-gluten--can be used to make the cracker style pizza. However, when Tom Lehmann discusses the type of flour to use for this style, he generally just specifies something like "pizza flour" or "strong pizza flour". I have taken that to mean either bread flour or high-gluten flour. John Correll on the other hand specifies high-gluten flour, as you can see at the Wayback Machine at http://web.archive.org/web/20040408023231/http://www.correllconcepts.com/Encyclopizza/05_Dough-making/07_dough_recipe.htm. I have used the KABF and it works for the cracker style, but when I did the bulk of my cracker style experiments at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,5762.0.html, I opted to use the Harvest King flour (now called Better for Bread at the retail level). Since I liked that flour, I stuck with it for all or most of my later experiments in the same thread because I did not want to introduce another variable.

You should be fine with the KABF but as a change of pace sometime, you might try the Better for Bread flour. The one type of flour that produced the least best results in my cracker style experiments was the all-purpose flour. It works but I could not get the desired degree of bottom crust browning, and I saw no compelling need to try to find solutions to that problem. I did try the KASL for other cracker style experiments but I could not get through the bag of flour before the bugs took over and set up housekeeping. Also, the Harvest King flour was sold at many supermarkets in small bags.

Peter,A couple years ago when I joined this forum, I recall my quest for cracker crust recipes resulting in looking for high gluten content flours. I ended up buying a large sack of Smart & Final store brand flour. It was 14 + % if my memory serves me. My cracker crust crunch was excellent, probably better than I've been making with the KABF these past few days upon returning to baking pizza. I was using a stone back then and getting great crunch. I was not able to get that crunch with a stone using the KABF. I had to resort to getting a steel plate cut for me last week.

Peter,Do you think the combination of docking and use of steel plate is keeping Chuck's crust bottom from being evenly browned all over.

Bob,

The closest I came to using metal to make my cracker style pizzas was using a cutter pan. That cutter pan was unperforated. But, even then, and with docking the skins with a commercial dough docker, the bottom crusts were not uniformly brown. I think it is because of the effects of use of the dough docker to create hills and valleys. Also, one of the hardest things I found to do was to be able to use a rolling pin in a home setting to emulate what a commercial sheeter or roller can do to achieve a uniform skin thickness with a low hydration dough. I eventually solved that problem by warming up the dough, as was discussed at Reply 16 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,5762.msg49138.html#msg49138. But, even then, the bottom crust did not have a uniformly brown color across the entire skin.

I think that Chuck is on the right track to achieve improved results by moving the steel plate and the pizzas around the oven to try to get the desired degree of top and bottom crust coloration. However, I personally believe that getting the desired degree of crispiness and crackeryness is more important than the bottom crust color even though it would be nice of course to have that color also.

Peter,Thanks for the tip on the cutter pan. I've been getting better at rolling out the dough. Another thing I noticed was that breaking the dough into 3 pizzas instead of 2 (from the recipe size on the OP) gave me an easier size pizza to control thickness, and it encouraged me to roll it out thinner. But I agree, rolling is a challenge with these crusts.

Will the cutter pan work with my oven setup? Should I place the cutter pan on the lowest shelf to get closer direct heat from the lower element?

I really like the use of a cutter pan because you are able to create that nice cruncky raised lip. Chuck, I cook mine down low but as you know all ovens are different and you wil just need to trial and error for your set-up. Your thinking of down low would probably be a good start though.

Then I prebaked 3 mins., let it cool and topped it. back in for 4 mins all at 550F. I gotta say I really like the beer dough better than the standard dough. Firestone Double Barrel Ale is what I used. The aroma when cooking is fantastic.